Purple Carrot Farm

History

The Purple Carrot Farm has existed in many forms at the College. In the mid 1900s, it served as a victory garden, and students were required to work on the farm during food shortages. More recently, it is a no-till 1 acre farm employing regenerative agriculture techniques and practices while taking an experimental student-inspired approach to small scale agriculture. Produce is sold to the College's Dining Service to be incorporated into the meals prepared for the Dining Hall year around.

In 2023, The Purple Carrot Farm joined as partner of the Bennington Fair Food Initiative, a grant funded by HUD. The Bennington Fair Food Initiative will support farmer and food entrepreneur education and training: grow workforce innovation and deployment across the local food system; encourage expansion for area farms and food businesses; and promote equitable food sales and food access programs. The Purple Carrot Farm is developing educational and training programs with partners at Bennington Community Market, Southwest Tech Center, and the Vermont Veterans Home for farmer, food systems, and food service workforce development and creating and sustaining small businesses. The courses offered, supported by the grant, will explore the broad field of sustainable farming and food systems. Through work at the Purple Carrot Farm students will learn hands-on skills such as food cultivation, preservation, processing, techniques for propagation, and design of annual and perennial production systems. We will further explore sustainable food systems by meeting with a cross-section of local agriculture businesses ranging from producers-traditional organic vegetable farm, mushroom cultivation, livestock, flower farms; to distributors- farm stands, markets and restaurants, non-profit organizations working on food insecurity, beekeeping and pollinator restoration, landscape design, restaurants and other elements of the food system. Through these field trips and in conversation in class, we will learn project development and management, discovering pathways to creating sustainable careers within the food system.

These classes will explore creating farm systems and practices that best support community and ecological resilience through readings, field trips, discussion, and presentations. Students will become familiar with farming/agriculture as a facet of community food resilience.

Getting Involved

There are lots of ways to get involved with the Purple Carrot Farm. You can do everything from showing up once to help out, to making it part of your academic Plan. 

Volunteering

We host weekly community work days on weekends. Currently volunteer work parties are every Saturday from 1-3pm until the end of spring semester 2024. Please follow us on Instagram to find out more.

Email us:

purplecarrot@bennington.edu